Founder of Jain outfit Veerayatan passes away

MUMBAI: Padma Shri Param Pujya Acharya Chandanaji did not just live a spiritual life; she expanded its meaning. In a tradition that often equates devotion with withdrawal, she chose engagement, with suffering, with society, with service. As the founder of Veerayatan Group of Institutions, she built more than an institution. Known as Pujya Tai Ma Shri, she built a powerful argument: that compassion must move, must act, must serve.

At 16, she took diksha, stepping into a path of renunciation. But hers was not a retreat from the world; it was a refusal to turn away from it. When she founded Veerayatan in 1973, the idea was both radical and simple, that faith finds its highest expression not in ritual alone, but in relieving suffering. That conviction took form in several schools and hospitals, hundreds of relief camps that followed earthquakes and floods, and in communities where dignity needed rebuilding as much as infrastructure.

She resisted the language of charity. Service, for her, was not generosity; it was duty. And it came without conditions. Caste, creed, circumstance: none defined who deserved care. Whether restoring sight to the visually impaired or rebuilding lives in disaster zones, her work carried a steady insistence that dignity belongs to everyone.

Pujya Tai Ma Shri passed away peacefully on Wednesday morning in Pune, and her mortal remains will be kept for darshan at Vardhaman Pratishthan on April 24 from 10am-3pm.

There is a story in her biography from her childhood, when she was still Shakuntala. Asked what she wished for, she said: “I want to be the endless sky, which gives space, light and rain. I want to give everybody everything.” It reads now less like a wish, and more like a life fulfilled.

The government has directed that the last rites of Padma Shri Acharya Shri Chandnaji Maharaj be conducted with full state honours.

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